Roads for Prosperity

Roads for Prosperity (often incorrectly called Road to Prosperity[1]) was a controversial white paper published by the Conservative UK Government in 1989 detailing the 'largest road building program for the UK since the Romans'[2] produced in response to rapid increases in car ownership and use over the previous decade. It embraced what Margaret Thatcher had described as 'the great car economy' although implementation led to widespread road protests and many of the schemes contained within it were abandoned in 1996.[3]

Contents

The proposals included 500 road schemes at an estimated cost of £23 billion based on predicted traffic growth of 142 percent cent by 2025.[1] It would have involved the doubling of the trunk road capacity with around 150 bypasses being built to meet the predicted demand.[4] According to The Times the road network expanded by 24,000 miles (38,624 km) between 1985 and 1995 and then by only 1.6% between 1996 and 2006; no definition of 'the road network' is provided.[5]